4 Responses

With regards to the Netflix discussion, I think there are two problems that I have with the way they distribute their films. The first is that Netflix does not promote the movies enough. It seems as though they release the trailer a week or two before it hits the service and then disappears due to another film coming out the next week. The second is that they do not release these films on home video, even they do with certain TV shows. In my opinion home video is a way to give these films a longer lasting life within the cultural discussion around film. In my experience I have watched one film more than once on Netflix’s streaming service, whereas I would be more likely to rewatch a film if I owned it on Blu-ray. If people are not watching these films more than once then they will be more likely to be forgotten, especially with the lack of continual promotion by Netflix.

David Bax may be interested Todd Vanderwerff’s categorization of the different degrees of serialization in tv. He considers The Sopranos, Lost, Mad Men & Bojack Horseman to all be “short story shows”, the antepenultimate category.

Many of the advancement you mention in the episode, I could see being replicated in modern video games. Right now Virtual Reality headsets with head-tracking technology has become common, so you can view an image with a 3D 180 degree field of view.

Force feedback has been common in video games for years now. Every major online digital distributor of video games, also distributes films and television. You could re-release The Tingler on a platform like PlayStation store or Valve’s Steam store which are capable of providing force feedback. Though you’d have to do something like place the controller under a pillow or something like that.